Diesel, A Bookstore in Malibu welcomes the Malibu Book Club back to the store to discuss Umberto Eco's award-winning novel, Baudolino, on Wednesday, February 13th at 5pm.It is April 1204, and Constantinople, the splendid capital of the Byzantine Empire, is being sacked and burned by the knights of the Fourth Crusade. Amid the carnage and confusion, Baudolino saves a historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warriors and proceeds to tell his own fantastical story.

Born a simple peasant in northern Italy, Baudolino has two major gifts-a talent for learning languages and a skill in telling lies. When still a boy he meets a foreign commander in the woods, charming him with his quick wit and lively mind. The commander, who proves to be Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, adopts Baudolino and sends him to the university in Paris, where he makes a number of fearless, adventurous friends.

Spurred on by myths and their own reveries, this merry band sets out in search of Prester John, a legendary priest-king said to rule over a vast kingdom in the East, a phantasmagorical land of strange creatures with eyes on their shoulders with mouths on their stomachs, of eunuchs, unicorns, and lovely maidens.

With dazzling digressions, outrageous tricks, extraordinary feeling, and vicarious reflections on our postmodern age, this is Eco the storyteller at his brilliant best.

This group usually meets on the first Friday of every month. All are welcome to join. FRIDAY, January, 4th 7PM Tonight's group will be discussing Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco.

The latest international bestseller from the author of The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum.

Nineteenth-century Europe—from Turin to Prague to Paris—abounds with the ghastly and the mysterious. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. Italian republicans strangle priests with their own intestines. French criminals plan bombings by day and celebrate Black Masses at night. Every nation has its own secret service, perpetrating forgeries, plots, and massacres. Conspiracies rule history. From the unification of Italy to the Paris Commune to the Dreyfus Affair to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Europe is in tumult and everyone needs a scapegoat. But what if, behind all of these conspiracies, both real and imagined, lay one lone man? What if that evil genius created the world’s most infamous document?

Information from the German Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.

Umberto Eco wurde in der Stadt Alessandria in der italienischen Region Piemont geboren, genau in der Mitte des von Mailand, Genua und Turin gebildeten Dreiecks. Bevor er gezwungen wurde, in drei Kriegen zu kämpfen, war sein Vater, Giulio Eco, Buchhalter. Während des Zweiten Weltkriegs zogen der junge Umberto und seine Mutter in ein Dorf in den Piemontesser Bergen. Eco erhielt seine Schulbildung bei den Salesianern, und sowohl in seinem Werk als auch in Interviews finden sich Bezugnahmen auf diesen Orden. His family name is supposedly an acronym of ex caelis oblatus (Latin: a gift from the heavens), which was given to his grandfather (a foundling) by a city official. His father came from a family of thirteen children, and was very keen of Umberto to read Law, but instead he entered the University of Turin in order to take up medieval philosophy and literature. Umberto's thesis was on the topic of Thomas Aquinas and this earned him a BA in philosophy in 1954. In that period, Eco abandoned the Roman Catholic Church after a crisis of faith. Following this, Eco worked as a cultural editor for RAI, Radiotelevisione Italiana, the state broadcasting station, he also became a lecturer at the University of Turin (1956–64). A group of avant-garde artists—painters, musicians, writers—whom he had befriended at RAI (Gruppo 63) became an important and influential component in Eco's future writing career. This was especially true after the publication of his first book in 1956, Il problema estetico di San Tommaso, which was an extension of his doctoral thesis. This also marked the beginning of his lecturing career at his alma mater. In September 1962, he married Renate Ramge, a German art teacher with whom he has a son and a daughter. He divides his time between an apartment in Milan and a vacation house near Rimini. He has a 30,000 volume library in the former and a 20,000 volume library in the latter.